Improvement in renovating faded fabrics



UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE,

RUDOLPH H. KLAUDER, OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.

IMPROVEMENT IN RENOVATlNG FADED FABRICS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 56,574, dated July 24, 1866.

To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, RUDOLPH H. KLAUDER, of the city of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania, have invented a new and Improved Method of Renovating Worn or Faded Woven Fabrics of Silk, WVool, or Cotton; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full and exact description thereof.

The various manipulations composing my improved method of renovating woven fabrics are separately well known to those practiced in the arts of dyeing and printing the abovementioned materials. In their hereinafter-described combined application these manipulations require none but well-known apparatus or machinery, that need not be specially adapted to my purpose, and for this reason I shall be able to describe my improved method fully and clearly without minute description of apparatus and without reference to drawings. (Various specimens of fabrics treated according to my improved method, and showing the effect thereby produced, accompany my application.)

The nature of my improved method of renovating consists in subjecting faded or worn fabrics to the successive processes of dyeing,

- opaque printing, and finishing, and its object is to supersede the heretofore-practiced means of renovating by plain dyeing, which is in most cases limited to a few dark shades of colors, principally in brown and black. Such plain dyeing often leaves traces of previous stains of various kinds, which, owing to the unbroken, even ground produced by dyeing only, are easily detected.

By the application of my improved method of combined dying and printingin body colors an unlimited variety of figures or patterns in one or more colors may be produced upon the fabric, which is thus greatly improved in ap pearance and value as compared with the limited and generally indifferent finish given to faded fabrics by dyeing them in the ordinary manner.

In order that my said improved method of renovating may be fully understood, I will now proceed more particularly to describe the same.

The fabric to be operated upon is first dyed by any of the various known processes in any color of a light or dark shade consistent with the condition and color of the goods before renovating. Silk fabrics are then sub jected to the process of finishing ordinarily applied to this class of goods, consisting in exposure of the same in an expanded condition to the heat of an open fire. They are then passed through the final operation of printing, for which opaque colors of unlimited variety of shades, prepared in any known manner,

- may be used.

Faded or damaged silks, in whole pieces, which are renovated by my improved method can generally be printed most rapidly and satisfactorily by machinery; but worn fabrics, such as ladies dresses, &c., cut into irregularlyshaped pieces of all sizes, are best printed by hand-blocks.

WVoolen or cotton fabrics I treat in substantially the described manner, only differing therefrom in one respect-i. 6., by letting the finishing operation for these consist of the well-known process of pressing between hot plates, which pressing I generally apply subsequently to printing, and which thus becomes the final operation for such goods.

I have in the above already stated that one of the most valuable results produced by my improved method of renovating and figuring consists in improving the appearance of fabrics in which traces of old stains are yet visible after the operation of plain dyeing; but, aside from the advantageous effects produced when the printing process is applied over the whole surface of the fabric, a particularly important feature of its application consists in the facilities it offers for appropriate ornamentation of the different parts of ladies dresses and other articles of clothing, which, having their separate parts out to shape, may have the skirts provided with elaborate borders or stripes and with any other desired local orna-' ments. The sleeves and bodies of dresses can in a like manner' be appropriately ornamented in an unlimited variety of styles, differing in effect from that produced by the making up of dresses from goods figured in the whole piece with a regularly-repeated set pattern.

I do not wish to claim, broadly, the com bined application of the processes of dyeing faded woven fabrics, whereby the described and printing for ornamenting or figurating improved effects are produced, as and for the woven fabrics; but purpose specified.

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is RUDOLPH KLAUDER The herein-set-forth combination of the pro- 7 Witnesses: cesses of dyeing and opaque printing, as a new THEODORE BERGNER, and improved method of renovating worn or WILLIAM HOWARD. 

